Hi Portland!

• I’m Jasmine Dumas
  • Data Scientist and useR living in Connecticut
  • Work at Simple Finance based in PDX
• Slides and Materials available on GitHub:
  • jasdumas/talks/PDX-R-user-group

Why should you care about this work?

• Shiny is a popular tool and is gaining popularity
• Advanced features have been added to shiny which have led to more robust apps
• With the creation of robust and advanced apps we run the risk of not including critical user experience (UX) & design features
  • Those features help direct users how to use the app as intended
  • Especially if the apps are developed for non-technical users

I began buildng shiny apps in 2014…

• Identification of cancer bio-markers based on gene expression data
• Development of a pipeline that would automate the analysis of gene expression datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus
• Focused on creating a user friendly tool
  • Understand how non-R users would interpret features, visualizations, and statistical inference

So building shiny apps are cool because…

• Transforms static R code into interactive reports and dashboards
• No need to learn web development skills
• free or low cost hosting options for shinyapps.io & shiny server
• Shiny is extendable and modular

Here are some cool advanced features of shiny add-on packages

• shinyjs: lets you perform common useful JavaScript operations in Shiny apps that will greatly improve your apps without having to know any JavaScript.
• shinydashboard: provides a theme on top of Shiny, making it easy to create attractive dashboards.
  
• shinythemes: easily alter the overall appearance of your Shiny application.
• shinyBS: Adds additional Twitter Bootstrap components to Shiny.
  • Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Cool shiny examples from the internet!

New Zealand Tourism website

Tweet analyzer

Twin Cities Bus

Hartford Connecticut Crime

A quote from an influential R Programmer…

Here is the point…

We, as shiny developers need to prioritze user experience now that apps are getting more advanced and the user base is expanding!

There are ways to do that…

• Take a nod from existing web applications and provide informative landing pages which detail usage, examples, status, developer contact information…all the pieces to ensure that users are set up for success
• User success can be defined if they:
  • Can use the application as intended
  • Can contact developers for assistance
  • Can see examples

This is where shinyLP comes in…

• A R package for adding even more Bootstrap components to make landing home pages for Shiny
• On CRAN and GitHub

jumbotron <- function(header , content, button = TRUE,  ...){

  button_label = c(...)

  if (button){
    HTML(paste0("<div class='jumbotron'>
                <h1> ", header, "</h1>
                <p>", content ,"</p>",
                "<p><a class='btn btn-primary btn-lg' button id='tabBut'>", button_label, "</a></p>
                </div>") )

  } else {
    HTML(paste0("<div class='jumbotron'>
                <h1> ", header, "</h1>
                <p>", content ,"</p>",
                "</div>") )
  }

}

Orange you glad I’m showing examples of shinyLP…

This shinyLP example is a-peeling…

Naval oranges prevent scurvy…

The End

• Questions & Discussion!